Sir, - Prof Brendan O'Leary (October 11th), seems to mix up people disagreeing with him, and people smearing him. I disagree with him, that is all.
I am glad that, in his response to my article, he seems no longer to be seriously pursuing his bizarre proposal that vacated unionist ministerial positions be filled by nationalist Assembly members. This would be contrary to the intent of the Good Friday agreement.
His claim that there is no residual sovereign power at Westminster to legislate for temporary suspension of the institutions runs counter to a key phrase in the Good Friday agreement, "the Westminster Parliament (whose power to make legislation for Northern Ireland remains unaffected)".
If Prof O'Leary's logic were valid, the Good Friday agreement meant either that there is joint sovereignty in Northern Ireland, or no sovereignty at all. This is not so, and no such suggestion was made at the time.
The All-Ireland institutions were explicitly designed to function on the basis of cross-community consent in Northern Ireland and, if that is absent, there is no practical basis for their operation in the form in which they were agreed. This would be a pity because they have been working very well. But as Prof O'Leary himself described it in a recent book, a "mutual veto" process was what was created. The Irish people self-determined to accept the Agreement, including the phrase I quoted above, until sovereignty might be changed in accordance with the principle of consent.
If suspension was a breach of an international agreement with Ireland, as Professor O'Leary claims, and it has happened twice already, then one would have expected the Irish Government to have taken Britain to court. That has not been done.
I hope the IRA will at last begin to put its huge arsenals irreversibly beyond use. Then a third suspension will not be necessary. At this stage the republican leadership should lead, rather than make demands of others.
If the IRA does not do so, I believe that the solution of premature Assembly elections, which Prof O'Leary favours, is wrong because it would further polarise matters and encourage nihilistic responses from all sides.
It might indeed reward those who have most responsibility for the current crisis, and punish those who have compromised most to resolve it. - Yours, etc.,
John Bruton, TD, Dβil ╔ireann, Dublin 2.